THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN. 351 



last pig was buried in pie-crust long since, and my poor 

 milk-goat passed into a menavelin stew. Our water, nearly 

 eight months in the cask, has become horrible, but the bread 

 is more tender as time passes. Industrious worms, an inch 

 in length, have bored and cut it so thoroughly that it is no 

 longer necessary to soak it in our hot coffee in order to 

 adapt it to our teeth; but still fastidious eaters do so to 

 scald the creepers out of the holes, and then skim them from 

 the cup " which cheers but not inebriates." The butter is 

 more like cheese than ever, and the beef is daily more oak- 

 like to the eye and more briny to the palate ; .choice bits 

 susceptible of a high polish serve as cane-heads, and the 

 beef has this to recommend it, it keeps the grinding appa- 

 ratus of the stomach in full play. Three things alone seem 

 to be permanent — the pork, molasses, and watch on deck. I 

 am inclined to believe that the last has increased materially 

 in length. I still hold that there are but twenty-four hours 

 in the day, and sixty minutes in each of the four hours of 

 the watch ; yet the minutes, like dullest music long drawn 

 out, seem to run to treble their ordinary length. You un- 

 derstand, then, how tiresome the watch is. Posey suggests 

 that the order of nature is always balanced, and that the 

 long minute on watch is made up by the rapid flight of time 

 in the watch below. 



In this state of affairs the song and yarn are necessarily 

 somewhat spicy and strong to pry the heavy portals of the 

 eyes, and the "Arabian Nights" and "Tom Moore" fail to 

 stir the sluggish blood. In such a mood to-night the cry 

 arose for "Bully " Sprague's yarn about Jonah's whale ; and 

 though it had often been told before, we hoped that it would 

 tide us over the yawning gulf until eight bells. The yarn 

 was in these words : 



" You have all heard of Bully Sprague, who steered Cap- 

 tain Sartori so many years on a secoud mate's lay; but you 



